Februay 27, 2021   Tokyo, Feb. 27 (Jiji Press)–Looking back at the March 2011 nuclear accident, former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said he had thought that a nuclear accident would never occur in Japan and admitted that he was wrong in the assumption.
   “Before the disaster, I had thought that a nuclear accident would not take place, but I was wrong,” Kan, a lawmaker of the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, told Jiji Press in a recent interview. “(Japan) should scrap all nuclear plants,” he said.
   “I feel grave responsibility for the death of many elderly people and people suffering illnesses when they took refuge in the early stages of the accident,” said Kan, who was prime minister at the time of the triple meltdown accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s <9501> Fukushima No. 1 plant, stricken by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
   “The biggest problem” that the government faced in addressing the nuclear accident was that “correct information did not come” from TEPCO, the former Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency or the former Nuclear Safety Commission.
   On his much-criticized visit to the stricken plant in Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan, on the day after the accident, Kan said he made the visit as he thought that he would not be able to capture the situation at the plant. https://jen.jiji.com/jc/eng?g=eco&k=2021022700560